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Sorry I'm late.
I had to stop by the Wax Museum again and give the finger to FDR.
We know Al Qaeda, Zawahiri, is supporting the opposition in Syria.
Are we supporting Al Qaeda in Syria?
It's a proud day for America.
And by God, we've kicked Vietnam syndrome once and for all.
Thank you very, very much.
I say it, I say it again.
You've been had.
You've been took.
You've been hoodwinked.
These witnesses are trying to simply deny things that just about everybody else accepts as fact.
He came, he saw, he died.
We ain't killing they army, but we killing them.
We be on CNN like, say our name, bitch, say it, say it three times.
The meeting of the largest armies in the history of the world.
Then there's going to be an invasion.
Alright you guys, on the line is our friend Reese Ehrlich.
Foreign Correspondent is the name of his syndicated column.
We run it at antiwar.com every couple of weeks.
He's the author of Inside Syria, which gets the Syrian so-called civil war right.
And he's got a new one coming out, The Iran Agenda.
And yeah, when I say foreign correspondent, no really, he travels all around the world.
He's been to all of these places and recently too and knows very well of what he speaks.
Welcome back to the show.
How are you doing Reese?
I'm doing great.
Thanks for having me back.
All right, good.
Very happy to have you here.
So we got to talk about Saudi and the new basically de facto king.
Is it fair to call him that?
The crown prince MBS, Mohammed bin Salman?
The new king dictator, yes.
All right.
So, so much going on there.
First of all, well, I guess let's start with Lebanon.
You have a situation in Lebanon, correct?
Where?
Well, it's called the confessional system where I think it's the presidency is always guaranteed to a Christian.
And the prime ministership is guaranteed to a Sunni.
And then I forget which seat the maybe it's the defense minister or something comes from.
The speaker of the parliament.
OK, OK.
And so now there's Sunni prime minister Assad Hariri.
Well, he's been in the news.
Why don't you just go ahead, take it from there?
Sure.
A couple of weeks ago.
It's almost like some kind of TV made for TV special in terms of the intrigue.
The couple of weeks ago, Assad Hariri, the prime minister, gets a phone call from Mohammed bin Salman or MBS for short.
You got to come to Saudi radio immediately.
He shows up.
They immediately confiscate his and his security guards cell phones.
They're held incommunicado.
Now, this is a prime minister of a country.
And suddenly he shows up on Saudi TV resigning his prime ministership.
And it caught everybody in Lebanon by surprise.
Among other things, he had had a bunch of meetings scheduled for the following week.
So a lot of speculation came out was what did the Saudis do to make him resign when he had no plans to do so before?
And in the last couple of weeks, the truth has come out.
And basically, he was held political hostage by the government in Saudi Arabia because they don't like what's going on in Lebanon.
They don't like Hariri's willingness to work in a coalition with Hezbollah, which is both a militia and a political party and is part of the ruling coalition there.
And the Saudis are on a big rampage to go after Iran.
And they saw Lebanon being controlled by Iran.
So they were going to stick a thumb in the eye to Lebanon.
The only problem was nobody in Lebanon was going along with it.
It caused a huge hubbub.
There was a lot of outcry that Hariri was being held against his will in Saudi Arabia.
The president of France invited him to come visit France with his family.
He escaped Saudi Arabia.
He came back to Lebanon and he unresigned.
That's the latest, which is that he's in talks with the Christian president, Michel Aoun, but he has not resigned.
So the Saudi plans to muck up developments in Lebanon were dealt a serious blow.
Amazing.
And I hadn't heard that he had unresigned.
I guess I had heard that he had returned back to Lebanon and then had been secreted away somewhere.
Nobody knew what the hell was going on at that point.
It's like a scene out of Homeland or some one of these other TV series, man.
I expect to see the CIA guy praying in the garage secretly.
I mean, it's bizarre.
But the latest developments are he continues to be prime minister.
And he's actually being welcomed as a national hero for having stood up to the Saudis.
It's completely backfired on the Saudis.
That's interesting.
And part of this from the very beginning was, and I think you said this at the time more or less, and this was also what Elijah Magnier said, was that Hezbollah is not taking the bait here.
What he was trying to do was get them to say, aha, now that Hariri is out of the way, Hezbollah can seize control over the state.
And then that would be the pretext to start some larger war.
And yet, as you said, first of all, they didn't take the bait.
None of them were having it at all.
They just said, we want our prime minister back.
Please return him.
And Nasrallah is no fool.
You could say a lot of things about him.
I don't even know what all you could say about him.
But nobody calls him a fool, really, right?
And I guess this guy, MBS, thought that he was.
So that didn't work out.
But so is that really what was going on, though?
They thought that Hezbollah would seize all this power and then that would be an excuse for Trump to send in the B-52s or what?
Well, that was their hope.
Yes, I think that what you've just said is accurate, which is Hezbollah in this country has this reputation of being a terrorist group of thugs.
And they hate Americans and they hate Israel.
And they're sophisticated players.
I have lots of criticism of Hezbollah.
I've written about that in my books.
They're a conservative Shia Islamist group, political Islamist group.
And they do plenty of things wrong.
There's plenty of reasons, for example, not to vote for them in Lebanon.
But they are a sophisticated political party.
They're not trapped easily.
And that's exactly right.
They didn't go for the bait.
And probably even more significantly, the U.S. and Western Europeans, France in particular, didn't like what Salman was doing because it was going to destabilize the situation in Lebanon at a time when it's destabilized anyway because of the Syrian war.
And even Trump and his set of goonies in power were not going to start a war against Iran because of a stupid provocation like this from Saudi Arabia.
So just like the war in Yemen that Saudi Arabia has been involved in now for two years that's blown up in their faces, just like their attacks on Qatar and the efforts to isolate them, now their latest efforts in Lebanon have blown up in their face as well.
It's really quite incredible how many blunders they can make in such a relatively short period of time.
Well, you know, the great Mark Perry wrote a piece in the American Conservative magazine about how it was Donald Trump's idiot son-in-law who keeps getting him into trouble who got him into this trouble and went and had a wink nod type of a thing with MBS in order to do this.
Or at least I'm not exactly sure that you know the degree but certainly that they had talked about I don't know if he gave him an exact green light but that they had talked about it and that I guess his sources were from the State Department because they were reflecting the fact that the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was pissed off because he was cut out of the chain of command and had nothing to do with it on this.
And yet then the White House actually responded maybe the first time the White House has responded to a piece in the American Conservative magazine saying that this was you know absolutely not true which just solidifies it as fact in my view but anyway I wonder what you thought of that is it really that and why would that be that you know the CEO of Exxon is so out of the loop on all of this stuff is that really the way they're running this government right now?
Well it's an extreme version of what's been going on for some time.
As you know, the conservative movement in the US is split among neocons realist various trends now Trump perhaps represents his own screwy nationalist trend and they have very real differences with each other and the neocons really would love to see Iran attacked either by Saudi Arabia by Israel.
Ideally by the United States and so they're willing to go along with any kinds of plans cooked up in the region and I think that we you're right we don't know exactly all we know is that Jared Kushner had visited Saudi Arabia three times since the beginning of the year including a visit several weeks before the whole Lebanon thing broke out so it's speculation is exactly what he was said.
But we can see one thing's for sure if they if they talked about this developments with Lebanon the US Kushner didn't stop him didn't say no you can't possibly do this and the Israelis were leaning favorably at least Netanyahu was favorable towards this kind of activity.
So what we're seeing playing out you know took place under Bush with Cheney and the neocons having dominant influence in the first four years of the George Bush administration.
Now we were seeing it playing out again with Trump and none of these policies that the mainstream conservatives are pursuing or the mainstream liberals for that matter are play out in reality because the people of Iran.
The net result of all of this activity and I've been following this very closely is to rally around the flag the people of Iran are angry at Trump they're angry at Saudi Arabia for provoking these wars are trying to provoke a war and it's having exactly the opposite effect of what they intended.
Well yeah and there's a brand new New York Times piece about that which raised the question of why is the New York Times making this point maybe it was just a good piece of journalism they published that happened sometimes but there was sort of the question of wow maybe they're really mad that Trump is so they're just mad that he's so ham handed that his anti-Iran positions are backfiring rather than really tightening the screws.
I think that it's part of both that is the policies aren't working and the New York Times can see that the correspondent that I know him is a very interesting guy he's Dutch and he's been filing from there for a long time under very difficult circumstances so he sometimes you know tows the line coming out of Washington and sometimes gets gets it right by his keeping his ear close to the ground so.
You have to kind of evaluate each article on its merits.
Well yeah I mean this one sure sounded right you know we don't really like it when the Ayatollah calls America the great Satan and announces this that and the other thing that they would like to see happen to us so imagine how they feel when we actually our government actually has power compared to theirs you know.
Well the way to look at it is if someone else were doing this to us how would we feel so here the U.S. signs an agreement on nuclear accord Iran lives up to it by all accounts they stop they ship their enriched uranium out of the country they've adhered to strict limitations.
Obama's out Trump comes into power and he says deals off not only that we're going to impose new sanctions not only that we're going to threaten new military actions against Iran and its various allies now imagine if Iran had said hey we're not going to live by this agreement anymore we're going to start enriching uranium as much as as much as we want and you can't say anything because you're involved in wars in Lebanon and Syria and you're supporting terrorism.
You're keeping Guantanamo open and by the way American police are murdering African-Americans so we're not going to live up to the agreement because you're engaged in all this other kind of human rights violations how would the United States react to that but that's exactly what Trump is doing to Iran.
Yeah it really is amazing too and you can see it's so blatant the way they wear it on their sleep it's like the Bush junior years only the level of fear is ratcheted way down so it seems even though I know you could see perfectly well right through George Bush's you know nonsense this time it's just kind of a parody right because you don't have that feeling of urgency that boy we better trust Bush because if we don't that Saddam really might get us or whatever here Obama.
And it's one of two things he only ever did right the whole time he was in power was he made this deal that took this huge fake but still huge outstanding issue between America and Iran the threat of their safeguarded civilian nuclear program and he just locked that threat down it's just double extra safeguarded their nuclear program beyond any measure now and so.
Now the Hawks clearly only hate the deal because it takes war off the table because it means that there is no emergency to preempt I mean what is it that we're afraid of that they still have some F-14 Tomcats that Gerald Ford gave them.
Is that the problem or what that they had no spare parts for this whole thing is completely ridiculous right so only nuke nuke nuke can scare people into supporting a war against them and Obama took that off the table and so now these guys are just completely outraged in turn on Fox News and everything they have to say about Iran their faces are just bright red with the frustration that all they have now are just the thinnest of lies because nobody is buying their nuclear threat story anymore now.
Yeah no that's exactly right and the difference is Trump is so incompetent that he just says out says out loud what other presidents had kept secret believed but kept secret so when it came to reneging on the nuclear agreement what's called the joint provisional operating agreement the Trump administration said yeah they're living up to it but we're going to renege on it anyway.
I mean it's just it's so blatant that they do the cover that used to be this kind of thin cover that previous presidents used is not even working anymore so anybody who can it's it's out there in public and pretty obvious what they're what they're doing.
Yeah all right now so I got a theory which isn't mine but it's sort of my overall model for understanding what American foreign policy in the Middle East is right now and obviously there are exceptions and side projects and God knows what but overall you think this is right that really what happened here is that Bush listened to Wolfowitz who listened to Chalabi who was in it for himself and in it for the Iranians and they basically fooled these neocons into thinking that they were going to win.
That the new Shiite Iraq would be friendly to Israel and all these things and that was really the major own goal as they call it in sports the major error of George Bush's invasion that he gave he really fought the whole war the whole civil war on behalf of the supermajority Shia to put that faction in power there are their political leaders in power there and that they're really friendly with Iran.
They have been this whole time and that's been their project now they've had to double the project in order to rouse the Islamic State out of western Iraq which were they push the Sunnis into the arms of these Al-Qaeda guys but anyway the point really being here not never mind Al-Qaeda that actually killed Americans but that oh no they've empowered Iran and so now they have to do what Hirsch back ten years ago called the redirection where now they have to do whatever Saudi says and they have to support Saudi shock troops who they have no army right they only have terrorists that they back job at all Nusra Al-Qaeda in Iraq the Libyan Islamic fighting group and ultimately the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria there and so now this is the project is to try to make up for the fact that George Bush fought a whole war for Iran and their friends is now we're trying to take these consolation prizes by bringing Assad down a peg by fighting against the Houthis in Yemen who were supposedly the cat's paws of the Iranians.
And I guess even in supporting the rise of the Islamic State which ended up being so bad that they had to reverse it and fight a whole war for Iran again now they're claiming oh no Iran has this land bridge now from Tehran all the way to to Beirut and never mind whose fault that is now that's why they have to you know stay in eastern Syria now that the Islamic State is defeated that's why they have to double down on all this policy is to prevent all the direct consequences of their previous interventions and again it doesn't seem like they're worried so much about the rise of all these Sunni jihadist groups as much as they are worried about the benefit to Iran.
Yeah I agree with you I think your theory is essentially correct.
The war in Iraq will go down in history as a major turning point in the decline of the US empire.
It was a huge disaster any way you look at it and it was noble.
Norman Solomon and I wrote a book Target Iraq that came out prior to the beginning of the war and in it we said you're going to empower the pro-Iranian Shia parties in Iraq by through this invasion.
And the neocons Cheney and company who dominated US policy in the first four years of the Bush administration they really believed that they could transform Iraq into some kind of a neocon model you know they were going to establish a stock exchange and a brand new army and as soon as they secured Iraq they were going to move on to Iran and to Lebanon and the entire Middle East would be remade in the image of I don't know neocon economics and politics.
Well it didn't last three months shortly after the infamous mission accomplished signs and speech on the aircraft carrier within a few months after that the US was bogged down in a war that is still going on to this day.
I would only add to what you say is that not only did that empower Iran in Iraq and also in Afghanistan the Taliban that were in power in Afghanistan prior to 9-11 were hated Iran they had killed the Iranian diplomats and by removing the Taliban left the door open for Iran to have increased influence in Afghanistan as well because of their relationship with the Hazaras there and other factions too.
Yeah they're well they're trying to make deals with whatever factions they can that are opposed to the US.
I mean there was a story just what a year and a half ago I guess was it half a year ago I think it was a year and a half ago by is it Helene Cooper New York Times lady.
Yeah sorry anyway very the the New York Times Afghanistan Pakistan lady and what she wrote was that oh yeah it turns out that the Saudis have been backing the Taliban and helping the Pakistanis to back the Taliban the Afghan Taliban against us in Afghanistan all this time because they're worried about their nemesis Iran which is in bed with the Hazaras who America is fighting for in the capital city.
So she said that was an ethnic one of the ethnic groups minority ethnic groups in Afghanistan.
Yes and the Hazaras are Shias so that's part of that.
The way to figure this out the way to look at this is that the US is completely opportunistic.
Anybody that will ally with the US against Iran is okay.
So they could be a Sunni terrorist group they could be businessmen they could be corrupt politicians it doesn't they can be drug lords.
As this is the case in Afghanistan and the US will look the other way, so long as they side with the US when whatever the current battles are right now it's trying to isolate Iran so that's how in Syria, Afghanistan and other parts of the region, the US is allied with these horrific right wing Sunni political terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.
The people supposedly that we were fighting because of 9-11 but the the record is clear.
Okay but so I really don't understand.
I mean I think I understand but it just doesn't make sense to me that so the Americans they have this grudge that the Iranians overthrew America's sock puppet fascist military dictatorship there in 1979 and the hostage taking and all of that.
I mean I've heard anecdotes right about what Warren Christopher and whoever these guys in the Clinton years saying what you know get along with the Iranians you know reproachment with Iran never not after my hard feelings about that day and that thing that happened and then and I know the Israel lobby they have their problem too you know of course their grudge and really their grudges all make believe too as Gareth Porter shows in his book it's just politics to divert from what's happening to the Palestinians.
But so there's got to be a real reason don't tell me that it's just that they maintain independence from us and so therefore there's this blood feud grudge that outweighs resentment against Al Qaeda that hit the Pentagon.
Well I'll tell you it's multiple reasons oil military bases geopolitics and they're all intertwined.
Remember Iran is one of the top oil producers and in terms of reserves in the world that's right up there with Saudi Arabia Iraq Venezuela is one of the top countries with oil reserves.
The under the Shah, the US had military bases in Iran and the Shah worked to as a puppet of the United States to send his troops into various countries in that region to promote and to maintain US interests.
The Straits of Hormuz that run the waterway that runs or sorry the the strait that is between Iraq and Iran is a key choke point for something like half the oil produced in the world so all of those reasons together yes the hostage crisis took place and what happened in Iran was awful and many of the people by the way who participated in that now regret what they did because of the interest that they had in Iran.
And the impact it had in bringing Ayatollah Khomeini to power but that is the excuse that's brought up in order to justify or to hide all of these other factors having to do with oil military bases and sea lanes and geopolitics.
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All right now so okay if they don't want to let us have military bases that's one thing but as Dick Cheney complained on foreign soil the traitor in 1998 he went to Australia and complained that Bill Clinton his commander in chief was doing the wrong thing by having these sanctions on Iran and he was there representing the interests of Halliburton and Kellogg Brown and Root and he said we're trying to do business with these people Iranians are humans too and why do we have to have this policy now once he's vice president and he can socialize all his costs onto the rest of us well obviously that's a whole different story and yet it seems like come on bygones bygones it's not like the Iranians wouldn't make oil deals with American corporations right if the price was right sure they have and they make deals with the European and Chinese and Russian companies yeah it's not about the Israelis kept their friendship with the Iranians all through the 1980s in the rise of Khomeini they didn't care about that they they got along fine until the mid 90s right yeah they sided with Iraq with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war because they saw Saddam Hussein as the bigger enemy so just like the U.S. will ally with terrorist groups when it serves their interests so will the Israelis you know it goes to show about you know that they can be dealt with if the Israelis can deal with them when it's Khomeini then the Americans can deal with them when it's Khomeini right yeah Khomeini yeah well whatever I'm a Texan you're an American you don't have to pronounce his name no I don't I'm just saying Khomeini was the scary looking one you know and Khomeini is uh well I don't know he's not terribly looking got good looking guy anyway but you know he's scary looking too but he doesn't have those dark circles around his eyes like the guy from the 1980s you know he was he was he was I mean after all this is all just about propaganda on TV and how people feel about it right yeah yeah there's these evil ayatollahs and they're out to get you um no I agree that what we see is back on the point you're saying yes the Iranians would be very happy to sell the U.S. oil at world prices um so it's not a question of availability it's under who on whose terms you because U.S. oil companies not only need to make a profit in the short run they need to have their profits guaranteed as a highest rate as possible in the long run and for the U.S. that means controlling the oil supplies for by you and your allies and denying access to your enemies and of course over the years the U.S. has had various enemies that we want to deny it to but the latest are China and Russia yeah and right now China and Russia have significant investments and trade relations with Iran and the U.S. is not happy about that right um and so it's not a question of uh accessing foreign oil or simply having normal trade it's about domination and control of the region yeah it's unfortunate because you know I think you know anti-war people complain that you know what a horrible policy to just kill all these people just to have cheap gas prices which really misses the point of what's really going on here like you said being able to choke off the Chinese or you know this and that kind of thing and yet at the same time I think a lot of right wingers and maybe just regular schmucks to kind of you know maybe they don't mean it in the most murderous sense but they sort of settle on well I guess it's true that our way of life depends on the government you know holding things this way as though that oil wouldn't all be for sale on the world market without the American empire there to do all this so-called securing at the cost of trillions of dollars of course you know says 700 over 750 military bases around the world what exactly if they internalize it like I guess this is for my own good even if it's you know maybe a little immoral or whatever like what am I gonna do pay six bucks a gallon then I can't get to work and it's just the presumption there you know yeah and of course the price for oil here or gasoline here is much more affected by oil production in the US and in countries that are not at war than they are there's a there's no relationship to what's going on in Iran and what the oil prices are at home that's that's the bottom line that has to do it I mean I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and years ago we used to have three oil refineries by three competing companies and the oil the gasoline prices were relatively low it's now down to one refinery and gosh Rudy's the oil price the price of gasoline continues to go up no matter what happens with the international you know international oil prices go down they go up here locally yeah it's your local cartel that's got you at the end of the day no doubt yeah Ron or a rock or anybody else's how much in this case Chevron can make can can squeeze the local consumer you know Abdel Bari Atwan from whichever I forgot what it was called now the the London RRB something or other paper there bin Laden told him bin Laden himself cracked the joke about what are we gonna do drink it you know in other words even if the meanest terrorist of all was the dictator of Arabia he'd still be selling the oil you know exactly that that he had a great sense of humor amazing all right so and now the grudge against Hezbollah obviously we know why Israel don't like Hezbollah but what does Saudi care about Hezbollah in Lebanon well it's and in the grand scheme of things it's a relatively small player you know Lebanon is a small population its army is is not virtually non-existent but Iran has significant influence in Lebanon through Hezbollah and through secondarily through the coalition government of which Hezbollah is part and Saudi Arabia is seems to be on a policy now of trying to go after what it perceives is Iran's interests everywhere in the region so why pick a fight with Qatar you know a small Emirate except because they didn't support the right rebel groups the they supported groups that Saudi Arabia didn't in these various struggles for example in Syria or Lebanon or Libya and so on so apparently MBS the new king dictator in Saudi Arabia is going after picking fights with numerous people around the region in hopes that it's going to help provoke new military actions by the US and Israel that's the only thing I can figure out the picking new you know smart countries smart politicians narrow the number of enemies they have to concentrate to defeat that enemy both Trump and MBS are picking new enemies they're picking new fights and and it's been the results have been disastrous well maybe that's the policy right is to to spiral things out of control where we're engaged with the Shia quote-unquote in so many different places at once they're all conflated with Iran and Iranian power anyway that it eventually really does lead to strikes on Tehran well that is certainly a policy that is advocated by some in Washington I don't it's not the dominant view now but that view is there and if the danger is real yeah well yeah if anything it's almost better that it's Trump who's so belligerent because in the same way the right didn't trust Obama nobody trusts Trump to get us into a new war you know what I mean where the Republicans were like man I'm not going to war with commander-in-chief Obama in charge that doesn't make any sense right well that's how we all feel about Donald Trump I think so this is war this is going to be the most successful war ever yeah absolutely tremendous and fantastic I would for it you know yeah it's it's on the art of the deal it's gonna make all of our hair grow back it's it's worth noting that some conservative Republicans and allied with some anti-war Democrats actually introduced resolutions in the Congress to say that the current war in Syria is illegal because there's absolutely no justification under anything that has been previously passed by the Senate or the House and the bill is going nowhere Trump doesn't want it because he wants to continue the same illegal wars and the kind of mainstream Democrats and Republicans don't want it because they don't want to take responsibility for a vote on that and so it's absolutely incredible that the US is now involved in seven wars count them seven wars in the region with combat troops on the ground and there's not in most cases they're not even a fig leaf of justification for it in terms of either international law or the US Constitution yeah yeah it certainly is getting out of control here well and of course especially with and you know I don't know man it seems like just because he's young shouldn't be everything people keep harping on the fact that the new crown prince over there is only 30 years old but in this case yeah he really seems to be a hothead and none of his adventures are working out right he's all angry about you know Saudi and CIA's loss in Syria I guess they're not completely cooked yet but pretty close there and he's got this you know operation this would be over in a day and a half down there in Yemen that's been going on for two and a half years now and you know probably not but a possibility of you know war crimes trials for deliberately inflicting a genocide against those people there and trying and failing to provoke this reaction and as you described this kind of ham-handed TV movie of the week kind of away with the situation in Lebanon and and he's done this huge purge inside the Saudi government and inside the Saudi ruling families rounding up the naifs and the Abdullah's to benefit the Salmons and I know it's more complicated than that but you know how do you assess this guy's situation now he's gonna be king for life or maybe not well we'll see how if these disastrous policies catch up with him or not it's a Game of Thrones time folks everything but the dragons because you know everybody's there there's a long history of competition amongst the princes in Saudi Arabia if there's princes number in the hundreds not in the in the dozens even and I think you know it's interesting what he did was he rounded up his political enemies stuck them in a Ritz Carlton hotel in downtown Riyadh and forced them the indignity and some of them had to sleep on mats in the lobby it's the world's most luxurious prison and then basically he gave him a choice you can give up billions of dollars in your checking accounts here and your holdings abroad or we're gonna throw you in jail and a pair according to their own sources 95% of the people held in this way agreed to give up billions of dollars and the figure that was floated around was a hundred billion dollars so far supposedly in corrupt money I don't doubt for a moment that the corruption is very high enough in Saudi Arabia but he's the MBS is only going after his political enemies not his allies who are equally corrupt so the idea that somehow he's this anti-corruption crusader is simply a myth or that he's a liberal who's going to crack down on the religious extremists or something like that he's simply shifting alliances in Saudi Arabia to his own advantage and eliminating his enemies so he's some already some of them have been released after basically signing a check over to MBS for billions of dollars so it was a ransom the mafia would have been proud well you know the Wall Street Journal which I don't know man but the Wall Street Journal said that he was attempting to seize maybe this is separate from the bribes that you're talking about these very high bails that have been set that you described but they say he was trying to seize eight hundred billion dollars right that's exactly what they said lots of numbers are tossed around that's a lot of money they claim 100 billion so far is what one source claimed right now these these reports that oh they're being beaten and tortured and all this in there you don't buy that do you I think I know it's conceivable to me if you're far enough on the wrong side so they were saying it was American mercenaries that were doing it and it was the thing that I read anyway didn't seem this yeah I I honestly don't know on that I haven't seen confirming proof of that one way or another but it's they certainly beat and torture political dissidents yeah they said beaten torture Shia Muslims protesting ever since the Arab Spring broke out but so but princes don't torture each other there though or not up until now at least right well let's hold off on that question let's come back to it when there's been more authoritative information I know so where's Prince Bandar Prince Turkey do you know I haven't got the foggiest idea but as soon as they contact me I'll let you know yeah see that's what I'm interested in is where's Bandar Bush right now is he an Aspen at his giant mansion or is he somewhere else yeah don't know Abu Zubaydah had his phone number at his giant mansion in Aspen you know that's interesting hey um yeah so um yeah no that's what's really interesting to me right is just how severe of an overthrow of the previous system is this yeah well if you were part of the losing side of this year definitely isolated politically and quite possibly well for sure militarily and quite possibly financially as well I mean that's what happens when you bet on the losing team in Saudi Arabia you get your fortune I mean they'll probably be down to their last twenty or thirty million dollars so you can imagine how impoverished they're gonna feel but that was down for from billions yeah man that's something else all right so now the war in Yemen here real quick I'm sorry I'll let you go man I'm keeping you too long here but uh do you see any kind of end in sight here I know that the the Salah Houthi side has said that they're willing to negotiate but it's been a while since I've heard that but I assume that that still stands and it doesn't appear that the US Saudi UAE side is achieving anything at all further all their war crimes on the ground there they're no closer to putting Hadi back in power in fact the Saudis are holding him on house arrest he wants to go back and they won't let him so I don't know what the hell's going on there I don't know if you know the answer to that oh man I want to ask you about Turkey too but no talk to me about Yemen man what's gonna happen with this thing let's stick to Yemen they'll call it a day basically you know the background there is that in Yemen they've had going back to the Arab springtime the Hadi the president backed by the US and actually by Saudi Arabia and others was forced from office due to popular protests Salah sorry he was forced from office his vice president Hadi came in but he proved to be very unpopular and a conservative political Islamist group called the Houthis came to power in the northern part of the country including the the capital city of Sanaa you know you had different player there Al Qaeda was active there but the Houthis had a legitimate political base among their followers particularly in the north of the country Saudi Arabia invaded and occupied along with the United Arab Emirates they backed Hadi the former dictator Salah aligned with the Houthis and they've been fighting it out ever since and Iran certainly politically supports the Houthis and there's some indication that they're providing small amounts of arms but they're not dominating they're not controlling the Houthis the Saudi government and the UAE are definitely controlling their side there's no indigenous support for them and for their occupation and as you mentioned there's been horrific horrific human rights violations intentional shelling and bombing of civilians hospitals schools by the Saudi forces there was a 60-minute show I guess a week and a half ago that detailed how awful the situation is for children there's cholera epidemic all the direct result of the Saudi invasion is it going to stop I think it will sooner or later I don't see any indications right now there could be a negotiated political settlement but so far the Saudis backed by the US is our seem to be having an unlimited amount of money to spend on killing civilians in Yemen it's a horrific situation when they have spent too much money when they can't get anywhere politically they'll be forced to sit down and either pull out or have some kind of political negotiations yeah and now I'm sorry one more follow-up on that is you know always hear of course about the Saudi and UAE forces the Houthis slash solid forces now allied holding the capital city in the north of the country and the tremendous benefits to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State with America flying as their Air Force there and still bombing them too but also flying as their Air Force fact Mark Perry I mentioned Mark Perry earlier he quoted a Pentagon general saying John McCain complains that we're flying as Iran's Air Force against the Islamic State in Iraq right now well that's true but it's against the Islamic State but in Yemen we're actually flying for Al Qaeda's Air Force there so how the hell you rationalize that you think you hate Iran again which is worse not that we have to take one side or the other here but anyway what I'm really getting at though is what about the socialists because I one time saw I could never find it again but I one time saw a guy on horseback firing his ak-47 in the air and saying Al Qaeda Houthis Salah give me Hugo Chavez you know Viva Venezuela and uh so I was saying yeah so what happened to these guys I don't I don't assume just because they're from the south that they're on the side of Hadi and the Saudi forces just because that's where they dominate down there near Aden but I never really hear anybody address their position in all this do you know yeah it's really complicated in Yemen if you go back some years there was a People's Republic of Yemen that in half of the country and the they were self-proclaimed Marxist Leninists and the eventually that government was overthrown and the country was reunified between south and north but there is still that leftist sentiment that exists among some of the Yemeni people and undoubtedly that's the picture that you saw and there and top of all the other complications there is a separatist movement that wants to split north from south and set up a independence government in the south that would presumably not be under religious influence and not be under Saudi domination so yes there still is leftist sentiment there in Yemen and you know if they have a part in the war they are they are they on the side of the Houthis at this point at least or not uh to my knowledge no uh but I I have not seen I let's put this I haven't seen anywhere near enough reporting on that question to make a judgment see that's what I'm saying one way at least I got you hey man uh thanks very much uh please write a thing about Turkey and where they are now at this point in the aftermath of most of the Syrian war I hope I don't know man whatever it is something like that and then I can interview you about it that'll make a good column in the future my next column actually is going to be about Catalonia and the independence movement in Spain right now and then um but Turkey is on the agenda okay great well thanks so much for your time Reese thank you Scott really appreciate it all right you guys that is the great Reese Ehrlich uh he wrote the book inside Syria he wrote a bunch of books okay uh but the latest is inside Syria and the new one coming out is the Iran agenda and he writes a column every couple of weeks called foreign correspondent it's syndicated all over the place including at antiwar.com you can read him there and you know me I'm at scotthorton.org sign up for the RSS feeds and all that stuff there if you want uh buy my book fool's errand timed and the war in Afghanistan that's at foolserend.us and amazon.com of course uh read what I want you to read at antiwar.com and at the libertarian institute at libertarian institute.org and follow me on twitter at scott horton show thanks
